*This is a collaborative post.
Is the nuclear family now dead? Family life is certainly a lot different than it used to be. Coming from a nuclear family and currently living one, perhaps it is not for me to comment. But to me family life is what you make of it. Slater Gordon have currently released this infographic on modern family life with some interesting statistics. Being married reading the statistic that 42% of marriages end in divorce is pretty depressing. But I guess it’s a fact of modern life.
In many ways I love the freedom modern family life brings. Only yesterday my son and I were talking about marriage. He declared he was going to marry his best friend Bella and they were going to have lots of cats when they get older. I explained to him that I didn’t meet his Daddy was older, I also said that boys could marry also marry boys and girls, girls if they wanted to. He thought about this and said cool, I think I am going to marry a boy then, that would be better. I love that for my children’s generation there will be this choice and a much easier choice that it has been for my generation and even more so than that of my parents. The freedom to be who you want to be.
Another interesting statistic is that 1 in 30 grandparents provide full time care for their grandchildren. I suspect this has to do with the changing working life of modern families and the cost of childcare. I know many friends and even my sister rely on grandparents to help care for their children while they are at work, because otherwise they could not afford the cost of childcare.
Over Christmas as our family grows we have had to be relaxed as to when we celebrate Christmas with different family members as it’s just not possible to see everyone now on the big day. Christmas has to be me when and what we make of it. If it’s a couple of days later, it doesn’t matter as it’s still good fun. For me, this is another example of how the modern family has changed, we no longer all live as close to each other as we used to and because of that things are done a different way to how we did them when I was a child.
Life and family has adapted. It brings with it as with every generation the good and the bad. I love that there is more choice, the family is about who you choose to love, embracing new and old family members. Loving who is right for you.
